


Glitch in the System: Chai Tea Latte

by SystemGlitch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 12:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13718022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SystemGlitch/pseuds/SystemGlitch
Summary: By E.Some catharsis happens.





	Glitch in the System: Chai Tea Latte

“Let’s go out.”

Widow looked up from her book, peering over the pages at Sombra standing awkwardly next to the dresser, and raised an eyebrow. “Out?”

“That’s what I said,” Sombra replied, doing her best to reign in the irritation roiling around inside her. It wasn’t Widow’s fault, though, and she wasn’t deserving of her ire, so after a moment, she added a smile to her response. “I need to get out of this place for a bit.”

Widow closed her book around a thin paper bookmark decorated with skulls - a gift from Sombra in one of her crafting moods - and set it on the table beside her. “What did you have in mind?” she asked, standing up gracefully from the bed.

“Coffee?” she shrugged. In reality, all she wanted was to move in the direction of somewhere that wasn’t her own head, and coffee seemed like as good a destination as any. “There’s a new place a few blocks away. Just opened, apparently have great drinks from what I’ve heard.”

“Perfect,” Widow replied, offering that whisper of a smile Sombra had grown to find such solace in. “A place yet to suspect our true identities.”

Sombra felt a slow rush in her ears, the unintended consequence of Widow’s unfortunate words. She took a deep breath, forced her thoughts to slow, and squeezed a smile through the white-knuckle panic threatening to rise in her throat.

“Yeah,” she replied thinly, swallowing and hoping her internal storm wasn’t as obvious to Widow as it felt to her. “Perfect.”

* * *

The shop was cute and light, painted shades of white and periwinkle with all manner of clever knicknacks in the windows to give it a certain Italian charm. It was precisely the airy, low-key atmosphere Sombra craved at the moment, and she immediately gravitated toward the window with the most sunlight streaming through it. Her mother had always told her she didn’t get enough light.

 _Never grew out of it I guess,_  she mused to herself. Pulling out one of the seats, she flopped down heavily as Widow sat across from her, and picked up a menu.

“Are you well?” Widow asked, eyebrows lightly bunched together in worry. “You have been so quiet today. It is unusual.”

“I’m fine,” she replied, not looking up from the menu. Her jaw hurt from clenching it. She always ground her teeth when she slept while stressed, and it was starting to give her a headache.

“Forgive me,” Widow said, sliding a hand across the table to pull Sombra’s away from the menu and hold it lightly in her own. “But that seems to be untrue.”

Sombra looked up at the sniper’s curious eyes, alight with something that might be called concern if Widow had been able to reliably bridge feeling with the emotion it expressed. Sombra knew that look well, though, and it gave her the slightest moment of reprieve from her thoughts. She owed her the truth, if not a candid explanation.

“You’re right,” she replied, willing herself not to look away. “I’m not okay. I…” she paused, sighing. “I don’t think I want to talk about it right now, though.”

“Of course,” Widow said, pulling her knuckles to her lips to brush a kiss against them before giving Sombra back her hand. “In your own time. I will be here.”

She smiled. Sometimes it was the smallest things that made the difference. Picking up the menu again, she gave it a good look to decide what she wanted.

“ _Siete pronti per ordinare_?” the waitress asked a few moments later as she made her way to the table.

“Breakfast crepe. Coffee,” Widow said, folding the menu and setting it down before her. “Black.”

“I’ll have an omelette and a chai tea latte,” Sombra said, doing the same with slightly less grace. Despite her self-proclaimed ineptitude at social interaction, Widowmaker’s years of social conditioning prior to being kidnapped by Talon still presented themselves through sheer muscle memory, making her one of the most refined people Sombra had ever met. She even  _slept_  gracefully.

Widowmaker opened her mouth to speak as the waitress smiled and left to fulfill their orders, but closed it with a nearly audible snap before any words came out. Sombra looked at her suspiciously, but decided to allow her to keep whatever it was she’d wanted to say for another time. If Widowmaker was exercising restraint, it was probably for a good reason.

“How is training?” Sombra asked to fill the expanse of silence looming between them. It was in moment like these, where she was too tired to maintain the social framework of their relationship, that she realized just how much she talked on a daily basis.

“Typical. Gruelling,” she replied, shrugging a shoulder. “Uninspiring.”

“Not even when Gabe insisted on going toe to toe?” Sombra asked.

Widowmaker smiled slowly. “I know all his tricks,” she replied. “It was too easy.”

“Ouch. Harsh, Widow.”

She shrugged. “You should spar with me some time. Perhaps it would be less predictable.”

Sombra snorted and waved her hand. “Right, and have my ass handed to me. No thanks, spider - you’re the athlete, I’m just a very motivated nerd.”

“I have seen you in the field,” Widow replied, expression neutral but voice amused. “You are not as inept as you claim.”

Sombra mulled over a witty response as the waitress returned with their drinks in hand, setting Widowmaker’s coffee and Sombra’s mug of spiced tea and milk before them.

“Enjoy,” she said, smiling as she walked away.

Sombra took a sip of her drink as Widowmaker glared, that same expression from before creeping back onto her face. “What?” she asked, setting the mug down and cradling it between her hands. It was pleasantly warm.

“It is a chai tea latte,” Widow replied, clearly struggling with some fact nestled within those words.

“Yeah, and?” Sombra asked, unable to suss out what that might be.

“It is redundant,” the sniper replied, mouth pursed in discontent.

“What is?”

“Chai tea latte.” Sombra shrugged and Widow continued. “Chai, it means  _tea_. Specifically  _milky tea_.”

“In what language?” Sombra asked, uncertain herself.

“Greek. Hindi. Likely more,” Widow replied. “And latte, it means  _milk_. In Italian.”

“I’m not following,  _araña_.”

Widowmaker narrowed her eyes at Sombra’s mug. “You are drinking a milky tea tea with milk,” she replied finally.

Sombra raised an eyebrow at Widowmaker’s discomfort. Slowly, and very deliberately, she lifted it to her mouth and took a long sip, maintaining eye contact the entire time. “Delicious.”

“You are a graceless abomination,” Widow replied, pressing two fingers into her forehead.

“Says more about you than me,” Sombra replied, the amusement behind her grin doing a decent enough job of chasing away the dark fog inside her for a moment. “You choose to be around me; I don’t have any choice.”

Widowmaker rolled her eyes, resting an arm over the back of her chair. Taking a slow sip of her coffee, she watched Sombra over the rim of her mug. “You are lucky,” she said demurely, looking into the contents of the cup as she murmured through the steam, “that you are  _very_  pretty.”

Sombra looked over at Widowmaker, watching the play of the sunlight over her sleek dark hair. She was lovely as ever, but somehow seated in such a mundane setting, relaxed, and with no motivation save for having coffee with her, the woman was radiant. It was not what she’d have envisioned for herself when she was younger, but frankly, none of this was. At no point in her past had she predicted her current reality, sitting in a coffeeshop with a world renowned assassin whose limbic system had been destroyed by a mad scientist, but who somehow managed to make Sombra feel deeply cared for regardless. She never would have thought she’d be a few clever, precise hacks away from accessing Helix’s databases, or cracking a worldwide conspiracy.

Or condoning the murder of an old friend.

Swallowing the lump of lingering anxiety that had taken up lodging in her throat, she stood up. Stepping out from behind the table, she paused by Widow’s chair and took the woman’s chin in her hand, placing a slow, deep kiss on her lips. “You too, _mi hermosa_ ,” she said, dropping her hand and standing up straight. “I gotta pee.”

Turning from the table, she headed for the bathroom, feeling the weight of Widow’s eyes on her back as she walked away.

* * *

Sombra spent the rest of the day maintaining her uncharacteristic quiet, as Widow pointed out to her no more than twice as they meandered back to the mansion.

“You are quiet,” she said, hand in hers as the strolled along the edge of the water.

Sombra shrugged. “Nothing to say,” she said, thinking about how much she had to say that was stuck inside like peanut butter on her tongue.

“Can I do anything?” she asked later, outside in the garden, idly picking dead leaves off one of the rose bushes while Sombra stared aimlessly at a cold orb weaver nestled in its web in the corner of the building.

“I don’t know,” was her only response. It was true, she thought; she didn’t know what Widowmaker could do for her. She didn’t know what she wanted, or needed, and so she maintained her introspection until they both sought an early night against the melancholy of the day. She fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, brain exhausted from the self-reflection she’d put herself through.

It was a short lived reprieve. The screaming from her dream carried her into consciousness, and she choked it off as soon as she realized she was awake.

Sitting up and hugging her knees, she was acutely aware of the sweat on her back as well as Widow missing beside her. Sombra’s brain was too muddled with sleep to suss the reason why she might be gone, jumping immediately to the conclusion that she was too much a monster even for the spider.

Sombra closed her eyes, willing herself to take a deep breath and recalibrate her frantic mind. When she opened them again, Widow was standing before her, the light of the bathroom haloing her bare skin like a golden angel in the darkness.

“ _Petite ombre_ ,” she asked softly, stepping back towards the bed, “are you well?”

“I’m fine,” Sombra replied, voice more like a haggard croak than the casual response she’d been trying to muster. “Just…a bad dream.”

“ _Oui_?” the spider asked, sliding back into bed beside her and wrapping her arms about her shoulders. “About what?” Sometimes, Sombra noted, Widowmaker exhibited empathy that should have been beyond her ability to feel. Either that or she’d simply learned the appropriate way to react to Sombra’s actions.

Either way, the effect was the same, and Sombra melted into her embrace.

“Miguel,” she said dully, too tired to dance around the subject any longer.

“The target?” Widow asked, clarifying.

“My  _friend,_ ” Sombra insisted, immediately losing the steam behind her assertion. One couldn’t be friends with a corpse. “Yeah. The target.”

Widow was silent for a long time, and Sombra closed her eyes, listening to the too-slow thumping of her heart. At night, sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep, she’d press her ear against the spider’s chest and dip into unconsciousness with the help of its metronomic beat. It was mechanical in a way that made her feel comfortable, and organic in a way that made her feel safe.

“I’m sorry,” Widow replied, and Sombra could hear the confusion in her voice.

“It’s not you. I’m not…mad at you, at all,” she replied, pulling away to look at the spider’s face. “I’m not even mad at myself, which I think is what I’m mad about?” She shook her head. “I’m exhausted. That made no sense.”

Widow huffed out a small, gentle laugh. “It made a certain sense,” she replied, brushing some hair back from Sombra’s face. “It is like when I feel the smallest thing, and spend more time wondering about that feeling than feeling it.” She shrugged. “Perhaps like that, at least.”

Sombra nodded, sighing and pressing her face back against Widow’s chest. “It’s been a long time since my past was relevant,  _cielito_.”

“Do you regret it?” Widow asked, no judgement in her voice.

Sombra opened her mouth to reply, then frowned to herself. “No. I don’t regret it.”

“ _Porquoi non_?”

Sombra shifted so that her back was against the sniper, and Widow wound her arms around Sombra’s waist, bringing her chin to rest on her shoulder.

“I killed my past when I killed Olivia. I can’t do what I do and maintain a lifeline to that reality, you know?” She struggled to form the words properly; to express how, despite the ferocity with which she loved her city, her people, and the relationships she used to have, that it was not enough to jeopardize the work she still had to do. Olivia had to remain dead, and no amount of nostalgia would keep her identity safe. “I regret that it had to happen, but that’s just it,” she sighed, and with it felt a lot of the guilt she was harboring shift in her chest. “It had to happen.”

“I agree,” Widow replied simply against her neck.

“I cut everyone off to protect myself, first and foremost, but I also did it to protect them, you know?” she added. “You can’t know about me and not have a target immediately placed on your back.”

“Unless you had one there already,” Widow mused, lips brushing against the shaved side of Sombra’s head. It always tickled, just a little, but she loved it regardless.

“There’s a reason I hang out with bad people,” Sombra laughed. “Half for my own benefit, and half because you’re all aware of the risks that come with association.”

Widowmaker looked down at her with those piercing golden eyes; two beacons of warmth in an otherwise cold shell. She shifted, moving so that she was face to face with Sombra.

“Perhaps,  _cherie_ , but I would say this risk is not what you think,” she said, her tone lighthearted, but her eyes serious. “I did not know by associating with you that you would help me learn to feel human again.”

Sombra laid her head on Widow’s chest and, finally, allowed herself to cry.


End file.
